Punishment was swift and to the point. Two or three swats to the hindquarters delivered by Simonds was intended to cure students of their pencil-swiping and class-cutting habits.

"We had tremendous results," said Simonds, who now runs a Christian organization in Irvine called Citizens for Excellence in Education. "The Bible says you spare the rod and spoil the child. That's hard for liberals to accept."

And so it is. On January 17, a vote to restore corporal punishment to California schools split along party lines in the Assembly Education Committee. The bill passed, 9 to 8, and is to be considered today by the full Assembly, which also has a Republican majority.

If the bill survives the gauntlet of the Democrat-dominated Senate, California would reverse its 1986 ban and become the first state to overturn a permanent prohibition on corporal punishment.

As scientific data have come to weigh heavily against the effectiveness of corporal punishment, states have moved away from its use. Today, 27 states ban the practice, as do all industrialized nations except the United States, South Africa and parts of Canada and Australia. Twenty-five years ago, just one state, New Jersey, outlawed physical force against children.

Studies show that states with corporal punishment have higher rates of student violence than those without it, writes sociologist Murray Straus in his 1994 book, "Beating the Devil Out of Them."

"Of course, the reverse could also be true -- the higher the rate of student assaults, the greater the authorization for corporal punishment," writes Straus, who founded the Family Research Laboratory of the University of New Hampshire. Either way, he said, hitting children does not reduce violence to the level found in schools without corporal punishment.

Famed Harvard University psychologist B.F. Skinner, grandfather of behavior modification theories, argued that corporal punishment does indeed modify behavior -- but in undesirable ways. When the California Legislature was considering whether to ban it in 1986, Skinner wrote to Sam Farr, then a Democratic assemblyman from Carmel, that students who are hit will avoid school, vandalize property or become apathetic.

The bill to reinstate corporal punishment was introduced by Republican Assemblyman Mickey Conroy of Orange County and co- authored by independent state Senator Quentin Kopp of San Francisco, among others. They define the practice as "the moderate use of physical force or physical contact by a teacher or principal as may be necessary to maintain discipline or to enforce school rules."

The bill should not be confused with a second Conroy bill to be considered today, which would allow graffiti vandals to be flogged in court with a paddle half an inch thick, 16 1/2 inches long and 3 7/8 inches wide.

By contrast, the first bill directs local school boards to define corporal punishment for themselves: Is it rapping young knuckles with a ruler or hitting rear ends with a paddle?

Principals would have to authorize the punishment, but permission would not be required each time, the bill states. A second adult would witness the spanking, and an explanation would be sent home afterward. Parents could exempt their children in advance.

"By bringing back corporal punishment, we are telling California's youth that they will be held accountable for their actions," Conroy said.

His aide, Patrick Joyce, said the assemblyman has no data to suggest that corporal punishment improves behavior. "Most of our information comes from letters from supporters rather than scientific research," Joyce said.

Except in the case of excessive punishment, teachers, principals and even bus drivers would not be criminally or civilly liable for hitting a child, the bill states.

"That's what's weird about this," said state superintendent of schools Delaine Eastin, who opposes the bill. "California has pretty strict rules about reporting any kind of child abuse. But corporal punishment says that when an adult is out of patience, it's OK to use physical force. I question the judgment of allowing this to occur."

BLACK AND BLUE

In Noble County, Ohio, where paddling has been a tool of classroom discipline for generations, a criminal court acquitted social studies teacher Bill Dimmerling last year of paddling 10-year-old Zebedee Gurewicz until the boy was black and blue.

"I'd written a behavior report to his parents that he needed to exercise more self-control," Dimmerling recalled.

"One day, he blew his nose extremely loudly. Then he got more paper and blew it again. He and the students thought it was very funny. Eventually I got out my paddle and let him know that the consequences could very well be a paddling. He continued right on. That's when I exercised my legal option for corporal punishment."

Said Zebedee: "He grabs me by the hand, squeezed it really hard and jerked me out of my desk and was pulling me to the door. He told me to stand next to the door and don't move, and he got another teacher. Then he grabbed me again, and we went into the stairwell.

"My feet were like five inches to where I could fall in the stairwell. He said, 'Zeb, I'm doing this for your own good. Bend over and touch your toes.' Then he paddled me. The second time he hit me, it brought me up on my tip-toes. Then I backed against the wall and was holding my rear end. And he said, 'One more time.' "

Dark purple bruises appeared across his buttocks within hours. His mother, Deanna Warner, was aghast.

"It's abuse," she said. "If I had done that to my child, I'd be in jail."

CRIMINAL CASE

Zebedee refused to return to Dimmerling's class, so his mother tutored him. He passed, barely. Meanwhile, Warner filed a criminal complaint against Dimmerling.

A jury deliberated for less than 10 minutes before acquitting the 25-year veteran teacher. Cheers erupted in court for Dimmerling, also a high-ranking minister at Zeb's church. Old women whooped. Friends clapped him on the back. And Zebedee's parents watched in silence and decided to move away.

Zebedee's story, while not unusual, is becoming less common nationwide. In 1990, educators legally struck 613,000 children, down from 1.4 million in 1982, says the U.S. Department of Education. More than 40 national groups oppose corporal punishment, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Bar Association and the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

NUMEROUS CRITICS

In California, numerous critics include the state PTA, teachers unions, the Association of California School Administrators and Superintendent Eastin, who predicts that lawsuits like Deanna Warner's will abound in the state.

But Bob Simonds of Citizens for Excellence in Education said the Ohio teacher was correct to hit Warner's son.

Referring to the boy as an "obnoxious little brat," Simonds said: "He's embarrassing the teacher, and he's destroying the teacher's authority in the classroom. Many psychologists don't know what it's like to have 30 kids in class with one kid saying, 'Yeah, what are you going to do about it?'